Stagecoach (1939)

Two notable Westerns were released in 1939
that transcended the B-movie cheapie status that had defined that
genre for ten years or more. One did so through satire: Destry Rides Again, starring
Jimmy Stewart, looked back on the clichés and simplistic
situations of the Westerns of the 1930s with a comic wink. But
the other, John Ford’s Stagecoach, went beyond those
clichés and simplistic situations, reinventing the Western
in a more durable and serious form and giving it new life for
decades to come.

Caveat Spectator

Stagecoach is not the greatest Western of all time, but
has been called the first great Western, and played a key role in
the status of the Western as the quintessential American genre.
It gave the classic Western one of its greatest directors, Ford,
and its most iconic star, John Wayne, until then an obscure
B-movie actor — a team that would go on to make some
of the genre’s classics, including The Searchers and
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Stagecoach also
established another crucial recurring "character" in Ford’s
films: the stunning Monument Valley landscape, with its massive
mesas and needle-like spires.

Instead of rote good-guy / bad-guy conflict, Stagecoach
emphasized characterization, social commentary, and moral drama.
And the extended Indian attack scene toward the end, heightened
by Yakima Canutt’s famous stuntwork, established a new
high-watermark for action moviemaking, echoing in later films for
decades (most famously in Indiana Jones’s escapades on the
exterior of a Nazi truck in Raiders of the Lost
Ark).

The story throws together nine characters representing a
cross-section of social classes and types, compelled to share a
coach through hostile Indian territory. Several are in some way
disreputable: Dallas (Claire Trevor), a lady of ill repute;
Hatfield, a professional gambler (John Carradine); Dr. Boone
(Thomas Mitchell), a drunkard; the Ringo Kid (Wayne), an outlaw;
and so on. But with the last outposts of civilization left
behind, social roles and status lose meaning, and the outcasts
are seen in a more sympathetic and nobler light than their
ostensibly more respectable but judgmental and hypocritical
companions.

There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking any of this; such
figures as the hooker with a heart of gold and the lovable rummy
were already clichés long before Stagecoach (indeed,
similar types can be seen in Destry Rides Again).

Nor is there much moral rigor to the film’s reversals, though
the film is commonly called a "redemption story." For example,
Dallas is ashamed of her past, but also defiant in the face of
social opprobrium, and while she would be glad to leave her past
behind, the wrongness (as opposed to the shamefulness and
undesirability) of her past occupation isn’t really confronted.
Perhaps in 1939 this could go without saying; but there’s also a
revenge subplot that’s depicted as uncritically and heroically as
any in the genre.

Still, there is subtlety and nuance in the way
Stagecoach develops its characters and their story-arcs.
It may respect the dissolute gambler Hatfield to a point for his
vestigial courtliness and sense of honor, but it pointedly
contrasts Hatfield’s high-handed disdain for the individual of
the lowest social standing, Dallas, with the cheerful deference
that the Ringo Kid offers Dallas as freely as he would any woman.
Later, Hatfield makes a sickening decision at a critical moment
that, however well intentioned, permanently alters our perception
of the character.

Cinematographer Gregg Toland, who would soon shoot Citizen Kane for Orson Welles, uses
some of the same chiaroscuro lighting, shadowed faces, and camera
angles celebrated in Kane. The landscape is of course
staggering; only the advent of widescreen (and color) would
enable later Westerns to surpass Stagecoach for visual
splendor.

For a generation not raised on Westerns, it may be both
instructive and amusing to see a marshal (George Bancroft)
literally "riding shotgun," i.e., riding alongside the
coach carrying a shotgun to help protect the coach. And when the
cavalry comes riding to the rescue at a critical moment, not only
is it actually the cavalry, it may well be the cavalry
that made a cliché of the phrase.

Product Notes

There is now only one edition of Stagecoach to get, the new Criterion Collection edition, available in Blu-ray and DVD. Newly remastered and restored, Stagecoach hasn’t looked this good since 1939. A wealth of bonus features includes an informative commentary by Western expert Jim Kitses; a 44-minute silent Western directed by Ford; a 1968 interview with Ford; and a number of new video segments, including an interview with Ford’s grandson and a tribute to Yakima Canutt, whose groundbreaking stunt work revolutionized movie action … and much more! A must-have.